[Sabrina garzotto]

Does the Xbox 360 support .mkv files being sent over a Windows Media Center PC? I am sending one over, but it keeps freezing every once in a while.

[Pawel Platek]

Does the Xbox 360 support .mkv files being sent over a Windows Media Center PC? I am sending one over, but it keeps freezing every once in a while.

Pretty sure you'll have to transcode the MKV files to stream 'em on Xbox 360. PS3MediaServer is a nice program and works with Xbox 360 I believe.

[Marquis T]

Socket 775 is basically a dead end, so there wouldn't really be a worthwhile upgrade path from the Q9550 without a new board, RAM and CPU. For this reason I'd go with the Phenom II. The 940 is AM2+ though, and while it looks like AMD doesn't plan on dropping support for AM2+ with it's upcoming Phenom II X6 chips, it may be worth it to go AM3 if you want to increase your chances of an easy upgrade path in the future. In that regard, unless you're planning on overclocking, it may be wise to get the Phenom II X4 925 or 945, which are AM3. Plus, DDR3 is about as cheap or cheaper than DDR2 now.

There's no such thing as future-proof, but I personally think AM3 would be the smart buy if you're looking for good price/performance with a wiggle room in the future.

I was thinking of maybe going for the Phenom II 955 so that i could go for an AM3 board, as it still seems to be cheaper than the Q9550.

[TIhIsmc L Griot]

Does the Xbox 360 support .mkv files being sent over a Windows Media Center PC? I am sending one over, but it keeps freezing every once in a while.

Pretty sure you'll have to transcode the MKV files to stream 'em on Xbox 360. PS3MediaServer is a nice program and works with Xbox 360 I believe.

There is a way to make Windows Media Player PC play nice with .mkv files

[Queen]

I was thinking of maybe going for the Phenom II 955 so that i could go for an AM3 board, as it still seems to be cheaper than the Q9550.

If you get either the 955 or 965, try and get one that's C3 stepping. They're more energy efficient and have more overclocking potential, if you're into that sort of thing. The C3 965 has a TDP of 125W as opposed to the C2's 140W. I think both C2 and C3 955s are 125W TDP though, so I'm not sure of any way to tell them apart before you buy. Maybe customer reviews could give you a hint as to which stepping it is, if the site has 'em.

If you can't tell though, no worries. The 955 was already a fantastic CPU, C3 is just a little bonus.

[Nicholas C]

If you get either the 955 or 965, try and get one that's C3 stepping. They're more energy efficient and have more overclocking potential, if you're into that sort of thing. The C3 965 has a TDP of 125W as opposed to the C2's 140W. I think both C2 and C3 955s are 125W TDP though, so I'm not sure of any way to tell them apart before you buy. Maybe customer reviews could give you a hint as to which stepping it is, if the site has 'em.

If you can't tell though, no worries. The 955 was already a fantastic CPU, C3 is just a little bonus.

Sounds pretty good. I think I might go for a Phenom II 955 then, although I'll probably take a few days to think it over. Anyone got suggestions for an accompanying motherboard? I've never been very well educated on motherboards, so I'm not sure what I should be looking for.

[Gaelle Courant]

Sounds pretty good. I think I might go for a Phenom II 955 then, although I'll probably take a few days to think it over. Anyone got suggestions for an accompanying motherboard? I've never been very well educated on motherboards, so I'm not sure what I should be looking for.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128378. My last 3 motherboards have all been Gigabyte, and future ones probably will be too. Never been disappointed with their quality or features.

If running two ATI cards in Crossfire, you'll be in x8x8 mode, which could possibly present a bottleneck for, say, two 5970s in CrossfireX, but most other cards won't saturate x8x8 bandwidth. Even with 5970s I don't think it would be a very noticeable performance hit.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131402 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130249 make some nice boards as well.

[how solid]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128378

Either that or, if you're looking for a better support for overclocking and using more GPUs in CrossFireX, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128377&cm_re=ud5p%2d%5f%2d13-128-377%2d%5f%2dProduct (yes, it's currently unavailable on Newegg).

[Matt Bigelow]

Either that or, if you're looking for a better support for overclocking and using more GPUs in CrossFireX, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128377&cm_re=ud5p%2d%5f%2d13-128-377%2d%5f%2dProduct (yes, it's currently unavailable on Newegg).

Eh, the UD4P OCs just fine, and x16x16 isn't really necessary IMO. Not worth the near $40-50 difference in price.

[Jarrett Willis]

Eh, the UD4P OCs just fine, and x16x16 isn't really necessary IMO. Not worth the near $40-50 difference in price.

On a side-note, where did that epic-fail-quote from your sig come from?

[Laura Elizabeth]

On a side-note, where did that epic-fail-quote from your sig come from?

Right http://www.overclock.net/intel-general/650269-how-long-until-im-stable-prime.html#post8210335. He edited his post, but not before just about every person on the forum copied it for their sigs.

[Leilene Nessel]

Hi,

I'm currently attempting to make a near-duplicate of one of my external hard-disks onto a newer, more portable disk. The source disk is a Maxtor OneTouch III 250gb, and the other is a WD MyPassport 320gb. The Maxtor is NTFS, and the WD is newly formatted to FAT32 for use with an Xbox 360. I'm running the operation in Windows XP SP3.

Like I said, I'm making a near-duplicate of the drive. Most of the data is music, videos and documents (no applications), but some of it is getting left behind and most is getting reorganized. I'd like the process to be as simple as possible, and thus so far I've been grabbing huge swaths of files (for example, the entire "Music" directory,) and copying it to the WD. However, I'm getting "The drive cannot find the sector requested" errors quite frequently, and it's rather disruptive as the whole copy operation is canceled when that happens, even if it's just one file that can't be found.

It's never the same file, and sometimes it's audio, sometimes video. All the files that canceled the operation are in-tact; I can copy anything over individually. And none of them are over the 4GB limit for FAT32. Is my Maxtor drive going bad (it is a few years old) or did I damage my MyPassport (the last one I formatted got bricked, fortunately I was able to exchange it for this one).

Any ideas?

[neil slattery]

Hi,

I'm currently attempting to make a near-duplicate of one of my external hard-disks onto a newer, more portable disk. The source disk is a Maxtor OneTouch III 250gb, and the other is a WD MyPassport 320gb. The Maxtor is NTFS, and the WD is newly formatted to FAT32 for use with an Xbox 360. I'm running the operation in Windows XP SP3.

Like I said, I'm making a near-duplicate of the drive. Most of the data is music, videos and documents (no applications), but some of it is getting left behind and most is getting reorganized. I'd like the process to be as simple as possible, and thus so far I've been grabbing huge swaths of files (for example, the entire "Music" directory,) and copying it to the WD. However, I'm getting "Cannot find the Path Specified" errors quite frequently, and it's rather disruptive as the whole copy operation is canceled when that happens, even if it's just one file that can't be found.

It's never the same file, and sometimes it's audio, sometimes video. All the files that canceled the operation are in-tact; I can copy anything over individually. And none of them are over the 4GB limit for FAT32.

Any ideas?

I detest Windows file copy for that exact reason. If I had Cygwin installed, I could open a Cygwin shell and do "cp -rp * /e" (assuming E: (/e in Cygwin) was my destination drive).

Another way that has worked well for me is to get 7zip and use it to write an archive (have to have enough room to write it on the old disk, or on your main disk, because it will be bigger than 4GB and won't work under FAT32). If you use "Store" compression (no compression at all), this is very fast. Then extract the archive onto the new disk, and finally delete the archive.

[mimi_lys]

Another way that has worked well for me is to get 7zip and use it to write an archive (have to have enough room to write it on the old disk, or on your main disk, because it will be bigger than 4GB and won't work under FAT32). If you use "Store" compression (no compression at all), this is very fast. Then extract the archive onto the new disk, and finally delete the archive.

That sounds simple enough. Creating an archive as I write, I'll let you know how it works!

Thanks Dogsbody.

[Romy Welsch]

That sounds simple enough. Creating an archive as I write, I'll let you know how it works!

Thanks Dogsbody.

Windows Explorer copying svcks, especially many small files or from a slow source/destination. Using a CMD prompt is better. I have to transfer about 32,000 small files from a DVD. Using a CMD prompt was the only thing that worked (well that I tried).

[cassy]

I seem to be having an incredibly ridiculous issue with my laptop at the moment, so hopefully someone can help me figure this out. I recently started playing WoW and I've noticed that it runs like utter crap if I have any other programs open in the background. So I can't even listen to music, have a web browser open, or anything. Even on my older computers I was able to do other things in the background without it affecting my ingame performance. My laptop is a Gateway P-6831FX which is more than capable of running WoW. Mass Effect 2 also has this problem but it does it even when nothing is open in the background. Both games only tend to lag/stutter when my CPU usage gets to 100%, and it happens every couple of minutes and lasts for about 10-15 seconds. This problem just started happening recently, before none of my games would ever use 100% CPU usage.

I've defragged my hard drive, ran Spybot, and a virus scanner. But, I still cannot figure out what is going on, so do any of you have any ideas or suggestions that don't include reformatting? While reformatting is not totally out of the question, it will be a fairly big hassle to backup everything and start over again. Also since I didn't mention it before, I'm running Window 7 Professional if that makes any difference (which it shouldn't, since everything was working fine a few weeks ago).

[Andrea Pratt]

I may have a problem....

I get this message after running Prime95 while I was sleeping:
http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/3249/cpuerror.jpg

What should I do?

[Steve Fallon]

Um this a tech issue I think. How do I clean my laptop screen without damaging it? Because you can see where my droplets from my sneezes have gone and other messy smudges.

[Roddy]

Um this a tech issue I think. How do I clean my laptop screen without damaging it? Because you can see where my droplets from my sneezes have gone and other messy smudges.

Gently clean it with anti-static wipes.

[Steven Hardman]

Gently clean it with anti-static wipes.

Ok anti - static wipes can I get those anywhere or just a tech store?

[Georgia Fullalove]

Ok anti - static wipes can I get those anywhere or just a tech store?

Go to an office supplies store or a tech store and they should have them, they'll be clearly marked as anti-static wipes.

[Marcia Renton]

Go to an office supplies store or a tech store and they should have them, they'll be clearly marked as anti-static wipes.

Ok thank you very much.

[Jaylene Brower]

I need some help with my desktop computer.
Yesterday I was on it when my house lost power for like 5 minutes, and the computer shut off. I know it didn't get fried or anything, because there wasn't a thunderstorm and my PC cords are plugged into a surge protector.
So I try turning it on when the power was back, nothing strange at first, just a message that the PC lost power and it takes me to the menu where you can boot in safe mode, use last settings that worked, etc.. I just try to restart my computer normally, the Windows XP page comes up with the loading bar, then after a second or so, I get a blue screen that lasts a split second, then the computer resets again. I tried all the options and it keeps doing the same thing!
My computer is less than a year old, I really don't think this is a hardware problem. If anyone can help me, that would be much appreciated, thanks!

[saxon]

I may have a problem....

I get this message after running Prime95 while I was sleeping:
http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/3249/cpuerror.jpg

What should I do?

Means Prime95 came up with an error. That's what Prime95 errors look like. If you were testing an overclock, it is not quite good enough to be called stable.

[louise fortin]

Means Prime95 came up with an error. That's what Prime95 errors look like. If you were testing an overclock, it is not quite good enough to be called stable.

I'm not testing an overclock, the CPU is running at a cool 55 degrees. I am testing for CPU damage, because of one incident where the CPU fan fell off for a few days last year, and I have a feeling it did permanent damage.